{"id":12173,"date":"2019-03-07T09:40:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T08:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/?p=12173"},"modified":"2020-10-20T17:32:24","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T15:32:24","slug":"the-amorous-indiesin-the-age-of-krump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.switchonpaper.com\/en\/profile\/cultural-appropriation\/the-amorous-indiesin-the-age-of-krump\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amorous Indies<\/em>
in the age of krump"},"content":{"rendered":"

The value of an artist’s work often lies in its unique place among all his or her other works. This is undoubtedly the case of Cl\u00e9ment Cogitore’s The Amorous Indies<\/em>. While one of his latest videos, The Evil Eye<\/em> (2018), confirms his skill in manipulating images, and his ability to free himself from their strict regime, his piece, The Amorous Indies<\/em>, produced in 2017, abandons all technical virtuosity to focus on the physical presence of krump dancers, at the dramatic heart of an adaptation – as unexpected as it is fertile – of an extract from the opera-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau (created in 1735). The fact that the work was commissioned for the 3rd stage<\/em> (the digital platform of the Paris Opera) in no way affects the originality of the proposal, filmed in the slightly spectral blue chiaroscuro of the bare stage of the Op\u00e9ra Bastille. “It’s as if the stage had infused a little of its energy into each dancer, as if everything had ignited1<\/a><\/sup><\/em>,” confided Cl\u00e9ment Cogitore, aware of the relevance of his choice, in preference to any other venue devoid of its own electric charge. The result is indeed intense, like krump itself, a dance that originated in the South Central district of Los Angeles in the wake of the deadly riots of 1992 triggered by the acquittal of the police officers implicated in the beating of the young African American, Rodney King, who unwittingly became a symbol of police violence.<\/p>\n

The film, conceived as a video clip, opens with a throbbing beat, before moving on to the Rondeau<\/em> which, in Les Indes galantes<\/em>, marks the “fourth entr\u00e9e<\/em>, (act)”, known as the Savages. The narration is part of a series of romantic plots, pretexts for an exoticism of pure fantasy, where the different acts take place on the shores of the Bosporus, in Peru with the Incas (for the second entr\u00e9e<\/em>), in Persia (for the third), or even for the scene in question, in the heart of an American forest pitting Indians and Franco-Spanish troops, against a backdrop of gallant romance. It is this musical passage, rising to a frenzy, that the artist chose to transpose the krump battles. The protagonists each do their moves, quickly, with jerky gestures, mimicry and stomps, surrounded by a colorful crew, hooded or with braided hair, grouped around in a circle, cheering the dancers or breaking into the center of the circle in turn to perform their skills and display their freestyle2<\/a><\/sup><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Embodied power<\/h2>\n

\u201cThe way a community is built, the way it gathers around a common object that is a story3<\/a><\/sup>“, in Cl\u00e9ment Cogitore’s own words, is the focal point of many of his achievements. Thus: Parmi nous<\/em> (35mm film made in 2011 whose story focuses on the journey of a young illegal immigrant); Assange Dancing<\/em> (video made in 2012 based on an image found on the social networks and looped, showing Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, dancing under the bright spotlights of a night club, as if in a last moment of freedom – assuming it really is him…); We Are Legion<\/em> (photograph taken in 2012 capturing a moment shared by a few members of Anonymous<\/em> gathered around a picnic at dusk, by a river) or even more recently Braguino<\/em> (documentary film made in 2017 that projects us into the heart of the Siberian forest in the presence of a recluse family). It is these modes of belonging, specific to a collective governed by its codes and ways of forming a group that the artist explores. Here, from the angle of krump and its set of moves, it is the embodied power of dance as a space of resistance that prevails. Through camera play as close as possible to the “magic circle”, he manages to share the liberating energy of the dance, designed to exorcise the negative impulses linked to discrimination experienced by ghetto youth (whether African-American, Latino or any other immigrant group characteristic of these highly stigmatized working class neighborhoods). As surprising as it may seem, the vehement, even outrageous gestures, particularly in the original form, Clown Dance (named after its initiator, Thomas Johnson, known as “Tommy the Clown”, with his emblematic use of face paint and Afro rainbow hair), miraculously match Rameau’s music, created some three centuries earlier. This over-expressive capacity could only appeal to Cl\u00e9ment Cogitore, sensitive to everything that can be produced by the body or the situation. “My primary material is raw reality: a face, a voice, a landscape, a sound, a light (…)4<\/a><\/sup>” as he likes to say.<\/p>\n

Between a gang and a ballet corps<\/h2>\n

Tackling Rameau’s Grand Si\u00e8cle<\/em> brilliance, but also taking him out of the comfort zone created by his reputation, was no easy task. His name alone symbolizes the tradition of high culture, placing him in the pantheon of the most eminent French composers alongside his elder Jean Baptiste Lully, both of whom gave Baroque opera its letters of nobility. If the legacy of royal feasts has left its mark on Rameau’s work, the opera-ballet (a genre to which Les Indes galantes<\/em> belongs) above all marks the advent of a lyrical theatre in which his harmonic boldness could thrive. Some analysts (commenting on the genius of its creator, criticized by conservatives for his Italianism) have made an interesting comparison, arguing that “the opera-ballet, whatever one may think of its lack of unity, is a grand performance, with originality and variety. (\u2026)5<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n

The surpassing, or rather the displacement of such a cultural imprint, could only be achieved at the price of a two-fold projection: in space (using the immense stage of the Op\u00e9ra Bastille) and in time (the dramatic irruption of our own, multicultural era). Cl\u00e9ment Cogitore rightly speaks of a “short circuit”6<\/a><\/sup>. We now understand his choice of the Savages as the act in which the krumpers develop the dance, and his desire to make it a symbol of the battle for identity recognition. We also understand his wish to return to a wildness in Rameau\u2019s music, as though it had been anesthetized by good taste and operatic tradition. In this respect, the dancers\u2019 furious movements, whipped up by the onlookers, clearly express what the artist calls the “blaze”, between the gang and the ballet corps7<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0“.<\/p>\n

So that his vision, far from being purely aesthetic, is tinged with a more complex political dimension than it seems, made up of “knots”. Thus, the mutation of the “cannibal savage” into the “good savage”, as perceived at the time of Rameau (and Rousseau), resonates quite differently today. In the book of worthy sentiments, we know that benevolence is never far from condescension. If the Peace Pipe scene in Les Indes galantes<\/em> refers to a concern for reconciliation, the “misunderstanding”8<\/a><\/sup> still remains, source of all the tensions that Cl\u00e9ment Cogitore illustrates by alluding to “young people dancing on a volcano9<\/a><\/sup>\u00bb.<\/p>\n